Turner came of age, according to the authors, in a “militant Methodism,” with a profoundly personal connection to God and “likely” (a word used a great deal along with “perhaps”) steeped in the Methodists’ devotion to natural rights. He may also have been influenced by larger events in the age of revolutions, the War of 1812, and particularly thwarted slave rebellions in Richmond, Va., in 1800, and in Charleston, S.C., in 1822. Lengthy excursions to Methodist-inspired events in Nova Scotia in the 1780s and Sierra Leone in 1800 provide, however, only vague contexts for Turner’s evolving revolutionary faith. The authors posit a “campaign” by “Nat’s family” to achieve his manumission, but just who constituted that family is not clear. We still do not know whether a woman identified as “Cherry” was really Turner’s wife, whom he may have married in 1822.
The signal feature of this book, though, is its meditation on the character of a prophet, and Turner’s place in that tradition. In the Hebrew Bible, prophets were made by God, often against their will; they were the people who could find the words to explain catastrophes or transformative events, and they spoke from dimensions they themselves did not understand. Prophets were full of doubt about their own calling and authority; they were anxious and they waited long for signs that only rarely came. In this work we enter Turner’s consciousness via the prophet Jeremiah’s struggles for certainty.
Prophets in the Bible became frail under the weight of their own visions. Turner, say the authors, came to slowly see his “commission” in visions in the sky, in blood he saw on corn, in a solar eclipse or a blueish sun spot and in his repeated recollection of the Scriptural plea: “Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you.” After prolonged fasting and prayer, Turner saw black and white spirits battling in the sky. But still he “mumbled and tarried.” By 1828-31, he arrived at a “war story,” so common in the Hebrew Bible, that he had to tell and then enact.